Last December, Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed in Kazakhstan and 38 passengers were killed. Russian president, Vladimir Putin unwillingly confirmed a Russian missile caused the crash. It was quite strange that no news media of Russia and neighbor countries did not disclose or clarify what was really going on about the downed passenger plane regardless of existence of worldwide satellite monitoring system. In addition, the news media was slow to report subsequent progress after the incident, only showing Putin’s apology and Azerbaijan president, Ilham Aliyev’s complaint. What suspended the move for seeking the truth? On the other hand, as everyone knows, Gaza-Israel conflict has been followed up by most news media almost every day. Is the airplane crash just a miserable accident for journalists and the death toll and refugees in the Middle East more important for reporting? The weapon causing the plane crash is a missile of Russian military who has long been in war with Ukraine, in which hundreds-thousands soldiers and civilians passed away to now. If media people think cries and protests by refugees and sacrifices toward reporters’ camera are much more significant than silence of victims and casualties in the crash site, their choice might lead to an impression manipulation by emphasizing caption image or targeting public acceptance. Similar lopsided attitude of the media appeared in the recent U.S. Presidential election. Three major American TV networks and major newspapers (except FOX news and a few) together expected Donald Trump’s defeat against Kamala Harris. However, the fact ended with Trump’s landslide triumph supported by southern states’ voters. Mysteriously, no thoughtful inspection or introspection about misjudgment of the media’s pre-forecast has been heard yet. The bottomline is that newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks belong to a commercially interest group. If the owner and/or majority of employees are democrats, they might not write article of pro-republican stance probably. As such, if neither Russia nor Ukraine does bring any interest or positive intention to the media directly, media reporters would take ambiguous attitude against even deadly incidents regardless of expectation for potentially bigger catastrophe in the future. So, I can say journalism tends to be short-minded looking for immediate commercial value or self-satisfied interest. They might not want to directly publicate rigorous reality with objective fact unless no-doubt proof is confirmed admittedly. As old man said,“History is made up.”, in addition,“always intentionally”.(Takashi Higashi, President, TCS)
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